The International Monetary Fund (IMF) says Nigeria’s inflation rate will drop to 26.3% in 2024.
Recently, In its Global Economic Outlook at World Bank Spring Meetings in Washington DC, the IMF highlighted the impact of the economic reforms and the currency policies as the country’s inflation rate is currently at 33.2 percent as recently released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) for the month of March 2024.
The administration of President Tinubu has had to battle high inflation levels occasioned by the fuel subsidy removal and exchange rate revaluation.
The development comes following the fund’s 2023 prediction, that the country’s inflation rate for 2025 would slow to 15.5 percent.
The IMF also sees inflation declining to 23 per cent in 2025 and further decline to 18 per cent in 2026. Nigeria’s inflation rate has been reviewed to stand at 23 per cent by 2025 by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
The growth of the Nigerian economy is expected to rise from 2.9 per cent in 2023 to 3.3 per cent in 2024.
This growth is achievable if the Federal Government of Nigeria continues the expansion and recovery in the oil sector.
Speaking about the oil sector, recently Alhaji Aliko Dangote slashed down the price of diesel to N1000 per litre which is targeted at affecting the inflation and reducing the cost of living.
To increase production generally, the government will need to improve security, speed up the advancements in agriculture and step up the execution of dry season farming not just the oil sector.
We have seen that inflation has increased and it is quite obvious that the inflation figure has reflected the reforms by both the federal government and the Central Bank of Nigeria.
The inflation rate in Nigeria has increased consistently from the beginning of the year. As at January this year, the inflation figure stood at 29.90% in January.
Then in February 2024, the inflation figure was at 31.70%.
The inflation figures stood at 33.2% with food inflation hitting 40.01%.
The World Bank, in its recently published Africa Pulse publication, had projected Nigeria’s inflation to be lower than the IMF’s projection at 24.8% in 2024 and then to settle at 15.1% in 2026.
What we have seen is that the World Bank and International Monetary Fund both agreed that the NIgerian economy should grow at a 3.3% rate.
Despite Nigeria’s inflation target of six to nine percent being missed for over a decade, Gourinchas stressed that bringing inflation back to target should be the priority.
He warned of the risks posed by geo-economic fragmentation to global growth prospects and the need for careful calibration of monetary policy.
“Trade linkages are changing, and while some economies could benefit from the reconfiguration of global supply chains, the overall impact may be a loss of efficiency, reducing global economic resilience,
